22 Things I’d Like To Tell My Younger Self

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  1. Don’t ever dye your hair. Your grandmother was right.
  2. Cherish the days in which you can rip back double shots of Everclear. They are precious, and quickly numbered.
  3. No, your first time will not hurt. But for the love of all that is holy, learn to go to the bathroom immediately after sex before you have a resulting UTI on Easter morning in your church’s basement.
  4. It is okay if your mother isn’t your best friend. You do not have to have the Lorelai-Rory dynamic, or anything even close to it, to feel fulfilled.
  5. The greatest thing you can do for yourself is learn how to properly maintain and shape your eyebrows.
  6. Say yes more often. Really.
  7. Repeat after me: tequila is not your friend. Tequila will make you punch out your sister’s boyfriend in an accident far too convoluted to explain. Tequila is not your friend.
  8. As oft repeated as it’ll be by the time you’re sexually active, there is nothing shameful in enjoying sex. Nothing.
  9. Never apologize for being emotionally expressive. The people who try to vilify emotions are only afraid of their own, and it is a gift that you can be so intact with, and cognizant of, your own.
  10. Don’t be so afraid all the time.
  11. Visit your vivacious grandmother more often after her stroke and placement in the nursing home, when she is just a shadow of herself. Being held back by your fear will be a hard, hard pill to swallow once the regret hits you after her funeral.
  12. Wear your goddamn retainer. You didn’t go through ten years of braces, headgear, and dental implants to not have beautifully straight teeth.
  13. You can be as fully, all-consumingly, wholeheartedly in love with someone as humanely possible, and they can still not love you back. You will be okay.
  14. Dude, really, you’ve got to stop being afraid of seaweed. This is getting ridiculous.
  15. It is okay to get drunk and cry about your dog dying, even months after the fact. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not.
  16. You are smarter than most boys you know. It’s a blessing and a curse.
  17. The first time you find out you’ve been cheated on will be on someone’s Tumblr page, and your 17-year-old heart will be broken. 22-year-old you will laugh.
  18. In 7th grade, skip the day your middle school track coach gave a lecture on nutrition. Dodging that bullet, and seven years of anorexia, heartbreak, and self-loathing, will thank you.
  19. Don’t always listen to the voice in your head. Self-doubt far too often gets mistaken for intuition.
  20. You will realize loving people comes easily to you, but loving yourself does not. Keep working at it.
  21. Green is your color.
  22. Write more frequently. It is a gift. Again, your grandmother was right.